Negative records and when (not) to give them

This is a verbatim quote from a mail I've just sent, mostly because it's way too late and I really should be sleeping, so I don't have the time for proper editing. But, the thing is that the OP of forum #29741 has just received a negative record with the note "Just so you don't do it again". I want to make it known that this is very much not the proper use of a negative.

I think handing out a negative for something like forum #29741 is way too harsh. You need to consider the fact that the help system is (still) notoriously hard to navigate, the range of allowed or desired topics is not explicitly listed anywhere in the help section or howto:comment (which doesn't even say anything about the forum), and most of all, the user has joined less than a week ago.

A negative record is a permanent marker preventing the user from ever being invited by anyone but an admin, which means no-one but albert or jxh2154 will be able to promote them, no matter how well they behave afterwards. As such, it's an appropriate reaction and punishment for "that was stupid and inappropriate and you really should've known better". It's not, however, an appropriate way of creating reminders for "this is not how we do things around here" if you don't have a solid reason to expect the receiver to have been familiar with our policies already.

As such, I'd very much like you to remove the record from the guy. An explanation by a forum reply, a private message, or even a notice to the mod (although that'd be slightly overkill here) would be all appropriate. Handing out negatives left and right for the slightest breach of the forum usage rules by new users isn't.

I don't want to single out the issuer of that particular negative, because it's not the point. The point is to highlight that there are inappropriate actions which do warrant a negative, and there are inappropriate actions which do not warrant them.

You have to consider the weight of what you do -- given that negatives can be issued by users, you are given a tool with which you can prevent someone else from getting promoted. Please don't treat it lightly, and please always consider that you too have been a newbie at some point. Simply beating newcomers senseless won't make them know or understand our policies; it will make them afraid. What you should do in such a situation is to educate first, and then, if they persist in their wrongdoing, consider a more serious corrective action.

I seriously don't think creating a silly little thread like that warrants getting a negative record at all. That seems totally unfair (and I didn't even know non-Admin/Mod/Janitors members could add user records until I read this thread).

But, should that power even be in the hands of Contributors (and I'll assume Privileged members as well?) in the first place? I think only people whose judgment can be completely trusted should be able to add user records.

Does a negative record actually prevent people from being promoted programatically? I always thought it was just a guideline, a black mark to be sure, but I never realized it couldn't be overridden. Of course I very very rarely promote anyone, and I've never tried anyone with a negative record.

That being said tons of people get negative records for inane commentary (from yourself included), which while definitely something to be clamped down on, as an isolated incident shouldn't really permanently bar people from advancement. Maybe we need to draw up some more concrete guidelines on how to use records.

I also wouldn't be opposed to limiting records from contribs or lower. I remember being very surprised when I first realized that wasn't already the case (I was actually still only "privileged" at that point).

Yes, in general I'd prefer is negatives were not used on first offenses, unless it's utterly egregious. Of course, what qualifies as that is the subjective part.

Still, unless they really fucked something up, just tell them they're wrong, and why, and leave it at that. Then if they persist, we can go with a negative or even straight to a ban.

I've removed the neg in question.

Shinjidude said:
Does a negative record actually prevent people from being promoted programatically?

It does. AFAIK this is the only technical consequence of negative records.

Shinjidude said:
I also wouldn't be opposed to limiting records from contribs or lower.

I wouldn't want to take away the ability for priv/contribs to give out records completely (and not just because I'm a contributor). Often this is how note or tag vandalism comes to light. Perhaps limit priv/contribs to only being able to give out neutral records (which wouldn't block an invitation). Or, we could just do away with the positive/negative concept altogether. After all, it should be obvious from the content of the record whether it's good or bad.

Bapabooiee said: But, should that power even be in the hands of Contributors (and I'll assume Privileged members as well?) in the first place? I think only people whose judgment can be completely trusted should be able to add user records.

Most records are legitimate, I think, so I'm not apt to advocate limiting negatives much. I rely a lot on the active users to notice various transgressions that I wouldn't have caught. And many of them aren't mods or janitors.

Lalaca has done a very good job in the past putting negs on note vandalism I never would have caught otherwise. Even though I think this particular neg was hasty, I don't think it would be advantageous to take the ability away from this user, or any of a number of others who commonly give negs.

So I'm for keeping this power in the hands of contribs and privs. I can easily delete unwarranted negatives, and reprimand any user who I think is intentionally abusing them, so I don't think it will get out of hand. It has not been a significant issue yet.

As for the hard coded ban about inviting people with a negative, people can mail me to get beyond that if needed.

I freely admit to making that particular record and also that it was a hasty trigger pull. It was something I did in the morning; most of my activity is during the evenings, when I have sufficient time to think about what I'm doing. I'm normally more careful about giving them out, as jxh2154 already attests to. So my sincere apologies for that.

evazion said:
It does. AFAIK this is the only technical consequence of negative records.

Wait what, I'm pretty sure this isn't true, unless it is a recent change (or it was true in the past and fixed.) I just promoted a user with a negative record on 3db with no issues and we're running only slightly modified code (and those mods would have nothing to do with this.)

Hmm, now that I look at it more closely, it seems that only negative records from mods or higher block an invitation. Admins can invite anyone regardless of negative records. This was put in place about 18 months ago.

Neutral record would be a cool option. It could give a record of first warnings. Right now we have to recollect how many times a guy has pissed us off.

Although that forum post did not cross the line into warranting a negative record, there are some things that do warrant immediate negative records.

I'm not saying that all the negs are justified, but sometimes its not worth warning the offender.

Dr_Fine_Rolo said:
Neutral record would be a cool option.

I don't agree, since the same thing could be accomplished by sending the user a message.

However, I think it would be an improvement if, rather than a single checkbox to make a record positive, there should be a pair of radio buttons to switch between positive and negative. Just the one checkbox seems a bit unnecessarily user-unfriendly.

IMO, negative records should simply carry the meaning that someone "important" was pissed off by the user at some point; the comments should explain the reason.

Negative records should never automatically affect anything, and should just be used as quick summaries of what the rest of the "upper echelons" think of the user.

Therefore I think you should just give a negative record to anyone you feel is an idiot, as long as you state the reason for your ire in a comment.

Maybe people would feel less strongly about this if the actual "record score" wasn't displayed on the userpage. If there are more negative records than you can count in the subpage, there's something seriously wrong with the user anyway. But the point isn't to count them, it's to read them.

For those who might say that this stifles the user's right to respond, making mods passing by misjudge them for lack of their side of the story: we could set up something to let users attach a comment to each of their own records.

Of course, all that said, I'd definitely recommend making the ability to give records to users something restricted to Contributor level members and higher, otherwise it could easily devolve into a fiasco.

0xCCBA696 said:
IMO, negative records should simply carry the meaning that someone "important" was pissed off by the user at some point; the comments should explain the reason.

Therefore I think you should just give a negative record to anyone you feel is an idiot, as long as you state the reason for your ire in a comment.

I always thought that negatives were more about "the user did something terribly wrong" than "important people think the user is an idiot". Lots of users are idiots, but some of them go out of their way to flaunt their idiocy in forums, comments, tags, notes, or posts, and that's when they usually get a record.

0xCCBA696 said:
For those who might say that this stifles the user's right to respond, making mods passing by misjudge them for lack of their side of the story: we could set up something to let users attach a comment to each of their own records.

I'm for this. Not sure what the technical requirements for setting up this would be, though.

0xCCBA696 said:
Of course, all that said, I'd definitely recommend making the ability to give records to users something restricted to Contributor level members and higher, otherwise it could easily devolve into a fiasco.

I don't think that's really necessary. I read the records often, and I haven't seen mass amounts of Privileged members making stupid negatives.

0xCCBA696 said:
For those who might say that this stifles the user's right to respond, making mods passing by misjudge them for lack of their side of the story: we could set up something to let users attach a comment to each of their own records.

I'm not sure that this would lead to much difference. Even the people who deserve negative records think that said records are unjustified, so for the most part I'd expect that what you'd get for the reply to the negative record would be "This person has their panties in a bunch and massively overreacted." or something like that.

I'll grant you that it's not really an abuse, because if the person clearly deserved it, then merely having a comment from the user that amounts to "No I didn't, even though I can't provide a legitimate reason why I didn't." doesn't really do anything, but it just strikes me as pointless either way.

Although I'm not terribly sure about this, can users delete records they have given? I was under the impression that they could at least delete their own positives, so if this isn't extended to negatives, then is there a reason that it shouldn't be?

Likewise, although it might be a bitch to code, perhaps making a place in the userpage or in the profile that outlines all the records that the user has given out, complete with comment. It would allow people to see at a glance if any of their records might have been misapplied, or if the person who they gave a negative record to has changed enough to warrant deleting the negative record.

Grahf said: Although I'm not terribly sure about this, can users delete records they have given?

Yes.

sgcdonmai said:
I don't agree, since the same thing could be accomplished by sending the user a message.

However, I think it would be an improvement if, rather than a single checkbox to make a record positive, there should be a pair of radio buttons to switch between positive and negative. Just the one checkbox seems a bit unnecessarily user-unfriendly.

It seems quite different to me. No one else is going to know that I sent him a message.